Robert Wilson Monologue

IT WAS NOW LUNCH TIME AND THEY WERE all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened.
“Will you have lime juice or lemon squash?” Macomber asked.
“I’ll have a gimlet,” Robert Wilson told him.
“I’ll have a gimlet too. I need something,” Macomber’s wife said.
“I suppose it’s the thing to do,” Macomber agreed. “Tell him to make three gimlets.”
The mess boy had started them already, lifting the bottles out of the canvas cooling bags that sweated wet in the wind that blew through the trees that shaded the tents.
“What had I ought to give them?” Macomber asked.
“A quid would be plenty,” Wilson told him. “You don’t want to spoil them.”
“Will the headman distribute it?”
“Absolutely.”
Francis Macomber had, half an hour
“Let’s not talk about the lion,” she said.
Wilson looked over at her without smiling and now she smiled at him.
“It’s been a very strange day,” she said. “Hadn’t you ought to put your hat on even under the canvas at noon? You told me that, you know.”
“Might put it on,” said Wilson.
“You know you have a very red face, Mr. Wilson,” she told him and smiled again.
“Drink,” said Wilson.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Francis drinks a great deal, but his face is never red.”
“It’s red today,” Macomber tried a joke.
“No,” said Margaret. “It’s mine that’s red today. But Mr. Wilson’s is always red.”
“Must be racial,” said Wilson. “I say, you wouldn’t like to drop my beauty as a topic, would you?” “I’ve just started on it.”
“Let’s chuck it,” said Wilson.
“Conversation is going to be so difficult,” Margaret said.
“Don’t be silly, Margot,” her husband said.
“No difficulty,” Wilson said. “Got a damn fine lion.”
Margot looked at them both and they both saw that she was going to cry. Wilson had seen it coming for a long time and he dreaded it. Macomber was past dreading it.
“I wish it hadn’t happened. Oh, I wish it hadn’t happened,” she said and started for her tent.